


Knick Knacks

by Rhinozilla



Series: Detroit 07 [10]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Humans Are Weird, Team Bonding, Team as Family, chris is a good bean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 12:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19107358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: Connor doesn't understand why the human officers at the DPD clutter their desks with personal effects. He asks Chris about this inefficient use of space. Chris does his best to explain the concept of "homey touches."





	Knick Knacks

**Author's Note:**

> My drug of choice today is Connor having positive interactions with his co-workers. He deserves it.

Connor was usually pretty straight forward whenever he had a question, so Chris didn’t immediately ask him what he wanted when the android came to a stop at the corner of Chris’s desk.

Except…he just kinda…stood there.

Chris glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, then back to his computer screen.

Yep…just…standing there.

Chris contained a sigh and paused his typing on the keyboard. He half turned and looked at him.

“What’s up, Tinman?” he lightly teased. You need something?”

Connor blinked, having been staring at the surface of Chris’s desk, and finally looked at Chris. He offered a small smile that Chris would describe as “oops, busted.”

“Hello, Officer Miller. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...space out.”

“Space out?” Chris turned his chair to look at the android fully. “Didn’t know you guys could space out. Everything okay?”

“Yes.” That answer was too fast.

Chris glanced past him over to Lieutenant Anderson’s desk. He wasn’t there.

“You sure?”

Connor stared at him for an uncertain moment. Christ, was he glitching or something?

“I had a…question.”

“Okay…Ask away?” Chris lifted an eyebrow.

Connor took a preparatory breath, paused, and then gave in. “Over the several months that I have been at this precinct, I have observed that many of the officers have made unnecessary modifications to their workstations. Why is that?”

“Modifications? For example…?” Chris sat back in his seat, glad for a temporary distraction from paperwork.

Connor frowned and pointed accusingly at Anderson’s desk. “Hank has an assortment of bumper stickers, magnets…a Japanese maple plant…pictures of previous fellow officers…a hat, which I have NEVER seen him wear—“

“Whoa, okay.” Chris lifted his hands. “Those aren’t modifications. They’re just…homey touches. Uh…decorations…Things to make his desk feel like his own. We all do it. Look.”

He gestured to his own desk. Most of his ‘homey touches’ were framed pictures of his family, with newer pictures jammed into the corners of the frames in front of the glass. He did have a stress ball in the shape of a heart, with a local hospital’s logo stamped on it: a takeaway from the last time a rep came to talk about heart health. A coffee mug from his wife’s alma mater university held all of his pens and highlighters.

Chris watched Connor do his visual analysis thing, scanning over every personal object littering his desk.

“Detective Collins has one picture of his niece on his desk, and a tape dispenser in the shape of a turtle. These are also…personal touches,” Connor stated, his LED cycling yellow in thought.

“Yeah.” Chris shrugged.

“It’s not an efficient use of desk space.”

Chris nodded his head sideways. “It’s not all about efficiency, man. A lot of us spend more time at work than we do at home. This is a way of…bringing some home with us. Humans like to be comfortable. We like to distinguish a place as our own.”

“Like marking your territory.”

Chris abruptly laughed and raised a hand at Connor’s offended look. “No, not…It’s just about surrounding yourself with things that make you happy. Police work is stressful. Having your own space can help you deal with that.”

Connor’s eyes moved pointedly from Chris to the stress ball on his desk.

Chris chuckled. “You thinking about decorating your desk?”

Connor looked momentarily confused, glancing back at his bare, pristine work station beside Hank’s disaster zone. “…No? What would I put on it?”

Chris gestured vaguely. “Whatever you want, within reason. Fowler’s pretty chill about our work areas as long as it’s clean and doesn’t get in the way. It’s your space, dude.”

The look of confusion blended into something harder to name, and Chris paused.

“Connor, can I ask you something now?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever had your own space? Like a…room or something…somewhere that’s yours to do with as you please?”

Connor’s expression smoothed out. “Cyberlife was in the business of creating advanced androids to serve the needs of humans. I can’t say there was any thought put toward the comfort of the androids themselves.”

“Damn. So, what, they just…kept you in a closet or something?”

“There were designated storage containers—“

“Shit, man, I was kidding…Holy shit,” Chris winced sympathetically. “That’s rough.”

“It was an efficient means of storage for inactive android models,” Connor explained clinically.

“Maybe when you all were machines. Now you’re all…having likes and dislikes and asking about decorating and shit…” Chris waved a hand. “Hey, don’t you have that, uh…mind zone or—“

“Mind palace.”

“Yeah, that. What’s that like?”

“It’s a zen garden, with various species of plant life, a pond, a walking path…” he described.

“See? That’s not bad…”

“It is a preloaded program created by the RK800 line design team. There was no…I had no input on it.”

“Shit, so even your own headspace wasn’t yours? That’s fucked up.”

At that, Connor straightened up, his expression walling off. “I’m sorry for bothering you, Officer Miller. Thank you for answering my question.”

It was an abrupt end to the conversation, and though not spoken rudely, Chris still felt like he’d overstepped somewhere.

“Hey, wait,” he said.

Connor stopped from leaving, looking something like self conscious.

Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “You know that desk is yours, right? I mean, you been here, what?” He counted back in his head. “Six months now? That’s just since the revolution. And you and Hank make a damn good team. You’ve been closing cases left and right. If you’re waiting for Fowler to fire you, I think you’ll be waiting a long time.”

Connor seemed to perk up a bit, though his posture remained walled off.

Chris sighed. “I’m just saying…Do what you want, man. There’s no social convention demanding that you decorate your desk.”

“I was designed to integrate with humans—“

“Humans don’t integrate with other humans half the time,” Chris pointed out. “Look at Gavin.”

Connor looked over to Gavin’s desk. The detective wasn’t there, giving him an unhindered view of his work station. It was a mess, per usual, with few things one would consider “personalized touches” aside from a novelty coffee mug and a purple rubber duck beside his monitor.

“Why is there a rubber duck—“

“Don’t ask,” Chris lifted a hand. “And DON’T touch it. Nobody is allowed to touch that duck. He gets really weird about it.” He pointed farther. “And Tina collects shiny things like a crow. I’ve never seen her use the same colored Post-It note twice, and all her paperclips are shaped like…animals and palm trees and shit.”

Connor pointed with his eyebrows. “Is THAT what being comfortable in your space typically looks like?”

Chris followed his indication to where Tina was sitting slouched at her desk, knees spread apart with her feet planted on the floor, rocking her swivel chair side to side.

“No, she just sits like an asshole.”

Connor snorted at that and craned his neck. “Officer Person doesn’t have any personal effects.”

“She’s not big on sharing personal details. She doesn’t even like having a name plate on her desk,” Chris stated. “We’ve worked together for three years now. I still am not entirely sure what her first name is, if I’m honest.”

As though sensing that she was being talked about, Officer Person looked up from her work and locked eyes with them. Chris deftly looked away; Connor did not. Person narrowed her eyes, picked up a file from her desk, and spun her chair so that her back faced them as she read it.

Connor looked back to Chris. “Thank you, Officer Miller. I appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me. Though I was designed to evaluate and understand human behavior, I admit that sometimes human idiosyncrasies can be…bizarre.” He tilted his head in thought. “I’m uncertain what kind of ‘homey touches’ would be appropriate for me to utilize…seeing as I’ve never had a ‘home’ to draw reference from.”

“Well…what makes you happy?”

“I like dogs.”

Chris smiled and bobbed his head. “That’s a starting point.”

Connor looked heartened at that, and Chris chuckled to himself. Yeah, Anderson was right: it was obnoxiously easy to like this guy.

A few days later, Connor arrived at his desk with a small, framed picture of Sumo that he had printed from his memory banks. As he started trying to find an innocuous place to put his first personal effect, his gaze caught on a little green box beside his keyboard.

A quick scan did not raise any alerts, so he cautiously picked it up and opened it. The object inside was wrapped in protective bubble wrap, and he unrolled it to find a small, plastic, silver colored figurine. His scanner identified the miniature figure as the Tinman from the 1939 film Wizard of Oz. The four inch figure was posed as though walking, and he had a bright red heart pinned to his chest.

Perplexed, Connor glanced around the bullpen and spotted Chris. The other office was giving him a knowing grin. He lifted his mug of morning coffee and nodded. Connor returned his own bewildered smile of appreciation.

He had never received a gift before.

With a curious warm feeling in his chest, Connor delicately placed the figure next to his terminal, adjusting its position slightly a few times. The picture of Sumo went on the other side of the terminal.

It was a start.


End file.
